The study, which appears in a recent issue of The Open Conservation
Biology Journal, tracked saiga with GPS collars in Mongolia and
discovered a "migration bottleneck" -- a narrow corridor of habitat
that connects two populations. The authors say that the corridor, which
spans just three miles wide, is threatened by herders with livestock,
along with increased traffic from trucks and motorcycles.

"Like other species of the steppes and deserts, saiga have avoided
extinction by being able to migrate long distances as their habitat
changed over time," said Dr. Joel Berger, a Wildlife Conservation
Society conservationist, and professor at the University of Montana.
"Given the uncertainty of how global climate change might affect
specific regions, and how and where species might persist, prudent
conservation strategies must take into account the movements of highly
mobile species like saiga."

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According to Berger, the Mongolian government, which participated in
the study, has already expressed interest in protecting the bottleneck.

Saiga once occurred in Alaska and Yukon but vanished in North
America after the last ice age. Today, they exist only in isolated
pockets in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kalmykia, Kazakhstan, and
Mongolia. Their numbers have plummeted by 95 percent, from an estimated
one million animals 20 years ago, largely due to poaching for horns
used in traditional Chinese medicines and competition with livestock.

Standing just under two feet at the shoulder and weighing about 50
pounds, the most striking feature of the saiga is its large nose, or
proboscis. The function of this unusual nose is not clear, but it may
serve to warm or filter air during Mongolia's frigid winters and
notorious dust storms.